Hershey targeting 7.5bn yuan Chinese milk candy market

By Yining SuEarlier this year, our food editor, Benjamin Cost, wrote about a report that chocolate is not a hit in China. It looks like Hershey has taken the lesson to heart, and is focusing on getting a segment of the milk candy market in China with a new candy to be called the ‘Yo-Man’.According to CNBC, the candy will be a premium milk candy, known as ‘Lancaster’ in English, and will be available in Chengdu, Wuhan, and Hangzhou starting in June. The rest of us will only get to taste the Yo-Man sometime in 2014. Outrageous.According to Steven Schiller, Senior VP for “global sweets & refreshment” at Hershey, the company learned the hard way about appealing to local tastes:

“We actually started with a more traditional caramel and we quickly found out that that’s not where the taste preferences are in China,” Schiller said. “The taste preferences and even the whole eating profile functionally of products are very different from what we know in the Western world.”

Schiller says that the company spent two years developing the candy.Hershey estimates that the milk candy market in China is worth 7.5 billion yuan, according to the Wall Street Journal.The launch of the new candy will be first time Hershey has launched a new product outside of the US in its 120 year history.